4:30 am here in Xi'an (500 k's north east of Chengdu) and just been shaken up by another strong aftershock. A lot of people leaving apartments and hoping there are no further shocks.
Wen Jiabao's quick response shows the scale of devastation - truly awful.

Anderson, Xi'an, China

Prayers and thoughts are with the poor people of Sichuan. I believe the Japanese Cities have mostly earthquake proofed their larger buildings but I may be mistaken about that. The west certainly has equipment and trained dogs to find survivors under rubble. Help would be sent if requested.

Boris, Belgravia, London

I live less than 100 kilometers away from Wenchun where the earthquake origined,and we did not suffer so much as Beichuan and Wenchuan.I wish that the disaster brought lowest damage and best wishes to the people!No more any disaster,hopefully

kevin, Chengdu, China

My thoughts and prayers to them.

Jennifer Wong , Canterbury, United Kingdom

As a university student in Chengdu ,I experienced the big disaster yesterday! When it happened,i was just closing the door.To my great bizarrerie,the door was shaking,even strongerly! I did`t not realize it a quake,just followed others ran out of the flat!And spent a sleepless night in the open air!

kevin, Chengdu, China

Interesting to see the difference in (and lack of) sympathy between the Burma and China disasters. Says a lot about our attitudes towards the two.

jeff, Manchester,

We were at Chengdu airport when it struck. There was about a minute of strong vibrations during which two distinct waves passed through the ground beneath our feet making our stomachs drop in much the same manner as they do when riding a roller coaster.

Henry Humphreys, Chengdu,

My thoughts and prayers will be with China now as well as Burma...so many tragedies in so short a time. Im sure the Chinese people will overcome this though.

Chris, Leeds,

pray for everyone that was involved by that disaster。
good luck ！！！

peter wu, chongqing, china

I can't believe.So many disasters come to China.

I hope everyone would be OK

Xu Wei, Nanjing, China

I can say it any more,because I have a big hurt about our huge disaser we must face to and which happened in my side(Neijiang),I cannot describe it fully,As a chinese person ,I just hope our brethrens could make a big effort to overcome our adversity.come on!My brothers!

Wen Qin, Neijiang, China

I wanna say we must and should have such confidence that we human beings definitely overcome any kind of desaster. Chinese authority and CPC will lead the Chinese to make it done well.

James Jiang, ChongQing municipality , The People's Republic of China

I live about 300 miles from the epicentre and it was not the actual quake which was so disturbing but the pandomodium caused by rumours of further tremors and thousands of people running scared through the streets of the city I live in.

Like myself I doubt many people here will sleep well tonight

Jim Murphy, Chongqing, China

The earthquake makes people so fair ,it disasered the buildings, people still could not get into their house. I think we could nou avoid the disaster, but we could take measures to prevent it and make the the disaster bring lowest damage.

zhoulingli, 金华, China

Robin Turrell,
Thank you for your kindness. Today I was in Beijing and I do not think it is serious in this afternoon, but I heard it is such a huge disaster later, in Sichuan province. Now the bad news is the roads to the earthquake area have been destroyed. God bless the suffering people.

Steven Han, Beijing, China